After being blown away by The First Omen, I just had to go back and check out the original film that launched the franchise. I guess it’s considered a horror classic, but I had never seen it before.
Surprisingly, the movie made me laugh a lot. I mean no disrespect; I would characterize it more as “laughing with” than “laughing at,” even though I’m sure the filmmakers didn’t intend to produce a comedy. I laughed because I was charmed… movies have evolved since the 70’s, and the rhythms and beats that were used to create suspense back then now seem over-the-top. Compared to horror movies today, everything—the acting, editing, sound—feels slower, but bigger, more theatrical. Especially notable was the score, which was not subtle at all, transitioning from idyllic melodies into Psycho-esque stings at the drop of a hat.
Again, that’s not to say that I didn’t like it. I enjoyed the ride. With older films, since they didn’t have the ability to cram special effects into every other scene, the handful of wow moments really stand out. I also got a kick out of learning the context of the references in The First Omen. I look forward to a future double feature, watching the two back-to-back.
Another entry in the TIFF Secret Movie Club series, this film was an enjoyable rom-com about a gay Indian man who brings a boyfriend to meet his traditional parents for the first time. We hit most of the beats of the rom-com formula: the meet-cute, the big fight and temporary break-up, the grand gesture to get back together (although I felt that this scene was missing an actual apology and acknowledgement of wrongdoing), and of course, the happy ending.
Interestingly, there’s no coming out scene: the main character’s family knows that he’s gay from the get-go. But they’ve never seen him be with someone, and the difference between being accepting in theory, and being comfortable in practice, is one of the main themes of the movie.
I had a lot of laughs watching this and it was a good time. After the film, the lead actor and the director held a Q&A session over Zoom. It turns out that they’re a couple in real life, and they were able to express how personal the film was for them, which really enriched the experience for me.
I guess it’s becoming a bit of a New Year’s mini-resolution for me to liberate myself from tech platforms (see Quoteshelf). Not that I have anything against the platforms in question, but it’s always been important to me to avoid getting locked into someone else’s website.
Since 2009, the first time I attended TIFF, I’ve been tracking every movie I watch. I think I used to do it on the venerable IMDB, but once Letterboxd came along, I migrated over and never looked back.
A social site like Letterboxd encourages a certain style of writing: pithy and snarky, i.e. like a tweet. I’ve written my fair share of those, with longer reviews residing on my blog. Having my content in two different places just sticks in my craw, so I’ve finally done the somewhat tedious work to export my posts, and have collected them all here in this post.
Godzilla, Alien: Romulus, American Fiction, Oddity, Furiosa, Blink Twice
Over the Christmas holiday season, I had more spare time than usual and got a chance to catch up with some recent movies, as well as revisiting some older ones.
A quirky, silly film about a woman who reincarnates and lives several lifetimes, each one taking place in a different century, starting in the 1600’s. In every life, she becomes obsessed with incarnations of the same man, and keeps trying to connect with him. He never seems to return her affections, though.
The production value is extremely low-budget, but it works. The various historical time periods are portrayed via costumes and set dressing, but the locations themselves are often just an empty room with hanging curtains in the background. It’s going for the impression of a time period, rather than a realistic portrayal, which I respect as a stylistic and pragmatic choice.
Ultimately, I had a hard time connecting to the story. I think the film is satisfied with cracking silly jokes, like dubbing the protagonist’s boneheaded husband with dog sounds because his previous incarnation was her pet. I did have a couple of good laughs, but there wasn’t much substance overall.
Eventually, the protagonist is reincarnated in the 80’s, and the object of her desire happens to be a famous pop star. I thought that the film had the opportunity to take a turn and comment on the nature of what we call “parasocial relationships” nowadays. But the movie sticks to its frivolous tone, and leads to a kind of empty conclusion.
It’s been a couple of weeks since the US presidential election, which seems like the perfect time to watch this film. During my viewing, I held a question at the back of my mind: could America actually erupt into violence? It’s depicted so realistically in the film that sadly, I feel like the answer is yes. But also, the film avoids commenting on the specific political realities that would lead to such a scenario, which I think is to its credit. If its messaging were too true to life, I would be so filled with dread while watching it that I would miss the more personal story at its core.
The protagonists of the film are photographers who pride themselves on documenting the truth in a neutral way. As someone who dabbles in photography, I bought into the film’s insistence on the power of images. Visually, the film gets a lot of mileage out of juxtaposing iconic American imagery—e.g. a Christmas village, a small-town Main Street, the many monuments of Washington D.C.—with soldiers in battle. The action scenes are intense and appropriately scary. Ultimately, the movie shows the inevitability of war journalists becoming hardened and traumatized by the death that surrounds them, and makes you wonder if it’s worth it.
Spoiler warning: Out of necessity, I have to reveal the plot in order to discuss my opinions of this film.
On the surface, this movie is fun to watch. It’s suspenseful and propulsive, and features a great performance by the lead actor, Willa Fitzgerald. However, I ended up disliking it after giving it a few minutes’ thought.
For this Halloween season, I caught up with a few horror movies from the past year. Although I enjoy horror films, I admit I’m too much of a scaredy-cat to go see them in a dark theatre with the big screen and loud sound. As a compromise, I wait for them to come out on home video so I can watch them in a less intense environment.
For this year’s first TIFF Secret Movie Club screening, we saw this Australian stop-motion animated film, about the tough life of a young woman who loses her family to various tragedies. Her emotional refuge is collecting—and hoarding—snails and snail-related paraphernalia; anything that evokes the spiral shape of a snail shell is irresistible to her. Like Uzumaki, this manifests as dense repeated visual patterns that I’m sure would reward repeat viewings. The jerky motion of claymation is inherently “cute,” but the colour palette of mostly browns and greys, as well the perpetually droopy-eyed expression of the protagonist Grace, serve to offset the quirkiness with a dour mood.
One of last year’s Secret Movie Club selections, The Iron Claw, depicted so much tragedy and loss that were it not based on a true story, I would think that the writers were overdoing it, sacrificing believability in order to tug at viewers’ heartstrings. Memoir of a Snail, because of its biopic-like structure, and of course, its title, had me believing that it also was a true story, despite its fantastical and whimsical visuals. I kept thinking, Wow, how did this person endure so much pain and trauma?, as if it were a real person.
It’s only in hindsight that I realize that it must be mostly fiction. Unfortunately, this leaves me feeling deceived. In my opinion, by putting its main character through the ringer, only to give her a twist happy ending, the film strays into emotionally manipulative territory. In the Q&A session afterwards, writer/director Adam Elliot says that he wants to achieve two things with his films: make the audience laugh, and make the audience cry. I think he tries a little too hard to reach this goal.
